


Pomona and Vertumnus

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-20
Updated: 2007-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1629653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gossip, ecology, coffee, and cross-dressing</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pomona and Vertumnus

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Catrinella for the beta!
> 
> Written for Lily

 

 

1.

The student center was crowded; it was midterm and it appeared that every table was taken with a student pouring over a stack of books and notes or occupied by groups of young people chatting over cups of the center's perpetually stale coffee. Pomona was about to give up and trudge to the library, but just as she was turning for the door she heard an excited voice calling her name from the corner.

"Pomona! Po. Mo. Na!" Pomona looked towards the rather spastic shouting, but grinned when she saw the petite, brightly clad figure hopping up and down behind a table in the corner. Pomona wound her way through the throngs, tossed her backpack down, and flopped into a low armchair.

"Arachne. Thanks. I thought I was out of luck."

"Got here early for a spot. I didn't have class today and you know I can hardly work without some sort of stimulation." Arachne waved her hand, indicating the hubbub around them. Unlike Pomona herself, her friend was extremely extroverted, which she had found odd when they were first year roommates. Arachne was a textile major and Pomona had always thought that "artsy" types were quiet and even a bit broody. Arachne had shattered that stereotype in the first week and was occasionally as loud and gaudy as some of her wilder designs.

"Check it out," she said, holding up the knitting from her lap. "What do you think so far?"

The mass shimmered with iridescent and metallic threads, the pattern abstract but pleasing.

"It's gorgeous, which I suspect you knew," Pomona said, arching her eyebrow. Her friend was good enough to even intimidate some of her instructors, and she was well aware - and proud - of it. "You _know_ you do gorgeous work."

"Mmhmm. Thank you," Arachne said, only a trifle smugly, and continued working on her piece. "How about you, though? Finished up your take-home? Maybe have time to think about the Harvest Ball?" Arachne's voice took on a wheedling tone that Pomona figured was an attempt to be convincing.

Pomona groaned; she felt she should have seen Arachne's attack coming. "Yes, I'm done. Turned it in this morning, actually. Which has _nothing_ to do with my availability for anything else, dance or otherwise." She held up her hand, halting her friend's interruption. "Spending the weekend in the greenhouse for my lab project. Period."

"All fruit and no play makes Pomona a dull girl." Arachne pointed her knitting needle at her. "Or maybe, "she added thoughtfully, "just a pervert."

"Arachne!" Pomona felt her skin flush. "That's not funny. Besides, I have to keep my grades up to keep my scholarship." She stood up and grabbed her pack and added with finality, "So obviously the fates have diligent studying in store for me this weekend. See you Monday. Ta!" Pomona winked at her friend to show she wasn't truly angry, then turned on her heel and departed for the horticulture building.

"Oh, hon," Arachne said to herself as she snipped a piece of fuzzy yarn, "nobody knows what the fates have in store for us. Why even try?"

2.

"Hi. I'm Vertumnus. Can I ask you something?"

Pomona started a bit at the interruption, bonking her nose on the microscope.

"Yikes. Sorry about that. Are you okay?" A freckled and bespectacled young man with fiery red hair was peering at her from the other side of the lab table.

Pomona sighed. The lab should have been deserted. She had asked permission from the department head to use the space when there were no classes scheduled and she had assumed - foolishly, she now realized- that she was the only one granted the privilege.

"Fine, thanks. And you shouldn't sneak up on people in laboratories."

"Yeah. Dangerous booms and all."

"Dangerous booms?"

"Sneaking up on people in labs." He shrugged. "Bad joke, sorry. Also probably not so much boom in a plant lab."

Pomona chuckled as she thought of one particular classmate. "You'd be surprised. Anyway, I'm sorry, but I'm not your TA. Just doing a bit of research." Pomona began readjusting the microscope.

"I know you're not. I'm in the Native Plants class with you." The young man peered intently at her, apparently trying to jog her memory, but she couldn't recall his face and shook her head.

"Oh, OK. I sit in the back row." He shrugged again. "Anyway, I'm Vertumnus and I'd like to know if you want to go to the Harvest Ball with me?" He grinned expectantly.

Pomona looked at him over the rim of her glasses. "The Harvest Ball. With you, whom I don't even know."

"Yes!" Pomona thought he seemed grateful she had grasped the concept and failed himself to grasp her tone of disinterest.

She pushed up her glasses and looked at him. He was tall and rather lanky, and was bent over, elbows braced on the table. He was goofy-looking but not, she thought dispassionately, at all unattractive. Arachne would probably say handsome, even if he was a bit young. He was better dressed than the typical student, though, especially the ones given to hanging around the horticulture department. While considering this, she noticed the small gold pin on his button-down shirt. _That_ explained it.

"Brotherhood insisted all the pledges have a date for the dance?" she said archly.

"Yeah, actually. How'd you know?"

"Pin." She pointed.

"Oh, yeah, that." He blushed a bit. "And I thought you could go with me." Vertumnus must have noticed the expression on her face because he started to stammer. "Uh. Not that I thought you'd _need_ a date. Like be, um, desperate. And uh, not like I'm asking you because I have to. You know. Like that." He blushed harder. "I'm not doing too well, am I?"

"No," Pomona answered. "Really, you're not."

"I need to work on my delivery."

"Yes."

"Okay. Right then." He started to back towards the door. "Forget I asked. Have a good, um, day. Later."

He turned and practically ran out the door so fast that Pomona had to laugh even as she returned to her slides.

3.  
The next two weeks passed peacefully without further solicitations about the Harvest Ball from Vertumnus or from anyone else. He did wave to her when she walked into Native Plants class, but stayed at his spot in the back of the room, never trying to grab a seat closer to her. Pomona had a little trouble admitting to herself that this bothered her just a tiny bit, and she had no intention of admitting it to anyone else.

Pomona didn't count on Arachne, though, who could gossip with a table leg and probably extract information from a sofa cushion. The Monday after the ball, Pomona found herself sitting with a cup of bad coffee in the student center, Arachne chattering at her across the table about the ball and who was there, what everyone was wearing, and what liberties her date had tried to take.

"Oh! He wasn't at the ball, but I saw your friend Vertumnus today!" Arachne said cheerfully.

Pomona gave her friend a _look_ and tried to suppress any sign that she might have any interest in how Vertumnus had spent his weekend. "He's not my friend, Arachne."

"Whatever." Arachne fiddled with her current project, a floppy felted hat, then discarded it in favor of her own substandard latte. "He asked you to the ball so you must be friendly enough."

Pomona sipped her drink and rolled her eyes at her friend. "He only asked because of a fraternity thing. Besides, he hasn't even spoken to me since, so I imagine I was his last chance for not getting demerits or whatever it is they do."

Arachne smiled at her smugly. "And that _bothers_ you. Not saying that you _like_ him or anything, Po. Just that no one likes to be a back-up choice. It's natural, feeling like you're the last apple on the fruit tray." Arachne waved her hand at the café's sad looking fruit bowl on the counter next to the more popular, and less healthy, snacks. "Like you're the bruised apple that just needs shining up," she added.

"You had me until you started comparing me to damaged fruit."

"OK, so maybe not so much with the analogy, but you have to admit he is kind of cute, and you could do worse. I mean - Vertumnus!" Arachne said his name with what Pomona thought was rather excessive cheer, until she looked over her shoulder where her friend was looking with interest.

Vertumnus stood behind her, holding two paper cups from the coffee shop across the street.

"Hi," Vertumnus grinned down at Pomona. "I notice you usually have coffee when you come into class, so I uh, got you some."

Arachne cleared her throat and pointed at the cups on the table, but she winked at Pomona.

"Which, I can see, you already have," Vertumnus continued gamely. "Although that is clearly Uni center café coffee and _this_ is organic, fair-trade, shade-grown, bird-friendly coffee." He said it with immense pride.

Pomona cracked a smile at his earnest - or pseudo-earnest - delivery, and Arachne erupted into a fit of giggles. Pomona kicked her under the table.

"Hand-picked and roasted by self-actualized, unionized, healthy adults on a semi-autonomous collective?" He added hopefully.

Pomona laughed. "But how does it taste?"

"Um." Vertumnus sniffed one of the cups. "Not bad? Haven't actually tried it. Not a coffee drinker myself." He set the cups down. "But you two ladies are, so, um, enjoy?"

Pomona thought he seemed a bit embarrassed and she wished her question hadn't come out sounding so pointed.

"Anyhow, I have to, um, be somewhere?" Vertumnus made it sound like a question. "See you in class, Pomona." He turned and took off as if he was being pursued by the Furies.

Pomona took a sip of the coffee he'd placed in front of her. "Semi-autonomous or no, it's very good."

Arachne balled up a napkin and tossed it at her. "Fickle! A cup of coffee and you're already coming around," she teased. "He's adorable. Or maybe a _dork_ able. I've never seen a guy who hates coffee try to set up an impromptu coffee date before. If I hadn't been here, would he have drunk it, you think?"

Pomona didn't answer but took another sip and considered Vertumnus. He wasn't bad at all, really. It was just that she wasn't looking for a boyfriend, especially one a year younger who'd most likely turn out to be a complete flake or just trying to get laid. He'd brought her coffee and she was drinking it. Pomona would thank him the next time she saw him, and that would be that.

4.  
The next time Pomona saw Vertumnus, it wasn't in class.

Winter break and term end were approaching, but the weather was unusually mild, so some of her more activism-minded classmates were taking advantage of the sunny day to host a protest on the grounds in front of the main administration building. Curious, and not in a particular hurry to get to the library, Pomona stopped to see what the latest fuss was about.

Several students held poster board signs with messages in bold red letters:

**Uni Pres. Hates Nature!**

**Someone Think of the Trees!**

**Leaves Have Feelings, Too!**

The last one struck her as particularly odd and didn't give her any insight into what precisely the protest was about, or how exactly President Chiron was demonstrating his hatred of nature. Pomona figured that, being a horticulture major, she must surely know some of the protesters. She crossed the street and managed to avoided a shouting match between a long haired girl in a ridiculous coin-trimmed peasant skirt and an equally silly looking middle-aged lady in a severe gray suit.

On the fringe of the group of protesters, she saw the red head of Vertumnus bent over a clipboard and pursed her lips. She had thought better of him than getting involved in shenanigans like these which, Pomona had always thought, had more to do with rabble rousing that actually accomplishing anything meaningful. Promising herself she wouldn't speak to harshly to him, Pomona walked over to him.

"Hi, Vertumnus. What's all this?" She smiled and decided that didn't sound too judgmental.

Vertumnus flashed a smile at her, but he looked at the group of now chanting protesters and sighed. "They're re-landscaping the grounds around the President's house and some of the ecology majors think he's not being environmentally conscious. But," Vertumnus looked back at Pomona and shrugged, "none of them seem to have actually looked at the plans." He tapped his clipboard with a mechanical pencil. "I got these from his office and really, I think people just saw the equipment and panicked. It's mostly pretty sound, with a few small exceptions." He glanced at Pomona as if he was making sure she was still listening, and circled a few markings on the plan. "There are a few changes, like this oak here, and maybe he could add some plantings _here_ , and I _tried_ to tell those guys that maybe if we just went and _talked_ to him we could maybe get him to make a better plan."

A loud honk interrupted him; a van from one of the local television stations had pulled up in front of the building and the protesters were shouting and waving at it.

Vertumnus sighed again and frowned at the flurry of activity. Pomona wondered if it was at all perverse of her that she liked that expression on him, since it seemed to prove he was more than a perpetually-cheery goofball.

"I really think they're in it more to get on television than anything else. Hardly any of them are from our department, not to mention they're tromping all over the grass. Idiots." He wrinkled his nose in distaste.

Pomona thought, despite herself, that was really cute and before she realized it she had taken his clipboard and started looking over his notes. "This is pretty good. Want to go grab some shade-grown, bird-loving, cruelty-free coffee? You can tell me more and I can nit-pick it."

Pomona wondered if the look on her face was as surprised as his.

"Yeah, that would be cool."

"All right then. We'll leave the media whores to it. Let's see if we come up with something if we put our heads together."

5.  
After their meeting of the minds about the protest, and the subsequent changes made to the landscaping effort thanks to their efforts (with a bit of help from the chair of their department), Pomona and Vertumnus fell into a regular habit of grabbing lunch after class or meeting in the library to study. She found herself really enjoying their conversations. Vertumnus seemed to as well, but there were no more invitations to dances even though the winter dance was approaching and the fraternity pin stillshone on Vertumnus' collar. Pomona wondered whom he was taking and even mentioned it to Arachne one evening.

"I have no idea," her friend said. "Maybe he's not going. Besides, when did you start to care?"

Pomona huffed out a breath and sat back in the tattered common-room armchair. "I didn't say I cared, just that I was curious."

"Uh-huh," Arachne replied and stared at the tangle of knitting in her lap.

"I can see your focus is elsewhere," Pomona said, perturbed.

Arachne gave her a sheepish look. "Sorry, it's just this stupid TA in the department. She's been badmouthing me ever since I placed higher than her at the fiber fair. So I have to make my final project good but not too good, or else I'll just piss her off even more." Arachne glumly held um the half-finished piece.

"Good luck," Pomona said, "Not that you'll need it. Anyway, I'm going for a drive. I think I need to clear my head." _Vertumnus is just way too much in it_.

6.  
It was a gorgeous night for a drive, clear and cold, and Pomona turned up the CD player as she headed down the two-lane road that wove through the university-owned forest and into the countryside beyond. She was singing, loudly and almost on-key, and it was making her feel a little less melancholy. What would really help would be just putting her foot down and speeding out of the forest and into the wide open space where she could see the stars and the fields whiz past. She opted for a safe speed instead, more because of the threat of a ticket than safety because the road was deserted, she thought to herself, nothing to distract or impede her.

Just as she was starting to rationalize speeding up, she saw something white in her the beam of the headlights; there was a figure walking along the shoulder. Pomona slowed down; the figure was walking towards her and it appeared to be an old woman, wrapped up in a scarf and coat and hunched over in the cold. _What is a little old lady doing out here, and at this hour?_ , she thought. _Maybe a townie who's had car trouble? Still, ridiculous to be walking; much safer to stay with the car._

Pomona slowed the car down to a crawl and rolled down her passenger window as she pulled alongside the woman.

"Ma'am? It's awfully cold out, can I give you a lift?"

The old woman turned, and even though everything but her glasses were covered by a thick scarf, Pomona recognized the green eyes behind them.

" _Vertumnus_?"

"H-h-hi, P-pomona." Vertumnus' teeth were chattering behind rose-painted lips and as he shoved the scarf down to speak, she could tell it and the camel-colored coat were old and threadbare.

Pomona leaned over and opened the door. "Vertumnus, what in heaven's name are you doing out here? And dressed like this? You've got to be freezing. Get in the car."

The smile he gave her in return was weak, but he got in the car and Pomona turned the heater on full blast.

"Are you okay?" She made a U-turn and headed back for campus.

"You mean other than being a wee bit cold and a whole lot of stupid?"

Pomona smiled. If he was making wisecracks, even self-deprecating ones, he couldn't be in too bad a shape. "Yeah, other than those. What are you doing like that?"

"My fraternity. Well, _former_ fraternity." He paused and Pomona couldn't see his face in the dark confines of her car, but she could tell from his voice that he was red with embarrassment. "They do this thing where the dress up the pledges. I was lucky, really. Leander's got up like a hooker. Anyway, they take us out in public and ask us to do random crap which is stupid but pretty harmless, but they got one of the guys really wasted. Crazy, dangerous wasted and I opened my big mouth and said they had to get him to student health and they laughed so I said I would if they wouldn't and I got out my cell which went over about as well as can be expected."

When he paused in his rambling to take a breath, Pomona guessed, "Took your phone and decided to teach you a lesson?"

Vertumnus's tone was wry. "So you've heard this one before."

"Close enough." Pomona turned into the parking deck, pulled into a spot but kept the car and heater running. "Always seemed asinine to me and probably dangerous."

"No kidding," he snapped back. "Sorry," he added quickly. "I don't mean to gripe at you. Of course it's stupid. The only reason I joined, heck the only reason _they_ wanted me to join, is because of my dad and more specifically, his money."

"Dad a donating kind of guy?"

Vertumnus snorted. "They hope so; only they don't know part of the reason he has money is he's pretty cheap." Vertumnus chuckled. "Only thing he's donated so far are a few potted plants for the frat house and that's because those came from his clearance rack."

Pomona's brow wrinkled in confusion. "His clearance rack?"

"At the nursery. He owns Green Lawns."

Pomona spluttered. "The big chain?"

Vertumnus looked at her, abashed. "Yes, the big chain. Which sells lots and lots of chemicals so your yard will be emerald bright all year long. I know, it sucks."

Pomona turned off the engine and turned to look at him. He looked silly in the old lady get-up. She could see a pink flowered cotton dress peeking out from under the coat; Vertumnus' freckled cheeks sported twin circles of rouge and his lips were shrieking pink, and she could tell as she leaned a bit closer, he smelled like violet dusting powder. Pomona nonetheless found it charming.

"Vertumnus. You are sitting in my car in the middle of the night dressed up like an old lady by a bunch of intoxicated morons who left you in the woods to freeze to death and you are apologizing about your dad's use of chemical fertilizer?"

Vertumnus chewed his bottom lip for a moment. "When you put it that way," he began.

"Look, you are not your father. And you're studying so you can bring him better alternatives, right?"

Vertumnus nodded.

"And you've already demonstrated you have no problem you have standing up for what you believe in, whether it's at the protest or with the hooligans tonight."

He nodded again.

"So Vertumnus, I'd say that you have absolutely nothing to apologize for," she said with finality.

"Not even the dress?" he asked hopefully.

"Did you pick it out?"

"Oh, no. I'd definitely gone for green if I had. Matches my eyes." He managed a smile and Pomona laughed as she leaned closer.

"Definitely not your color," she said, her voice low. "So we'd better get you out of it."

Vertumnus turned towards her and whispered back, "I don't think you meant that to come out that way."

Pomona looked back at him, eyes mischievous. "We'll see," and kissed him.

-FIN-

 

 

 


End file.
